Chapter 7

The New York Public Library Digital Collections provide the public with digital versions of books, manuscripts, photographs, engravings, and other items as well as tools to browse, search, and analyze these materials remotely via the Internet. Four general sections allow the browsing of the collections: Digital Schomburg (Center for Research in Black Culture); Archival finding aids; Cooperative projects; and On-Line Exhibitions.

SPIRO (UC Berkeley Architecture/Slide Library Slide and Photograph Collection) is the visual on-line public access catalog (VOPAC) for the UC (University of California) Berkeley's Architecture Slide Library (ASL) collection of 200,000 35mm slides.

"SPIRO can be accessed using either Image Query, a powerful database retrieval package, or the World Wide Web. ImageQuery2.0 was developed originally by UC Berkeley's Information Systems and Technology, Advanced Technology Planning (ATP) Office under the direction of Barbara Morgan. ImageQuery2.0 is currently maintained by the Museum Informatics Project (MIP). ImageQuery SPIRO permits access to the collection by ten access points: period; place; creator name; object name; view type; subject terms from the Art and Architecture Thesaurus; source of image; creation dates; classification number; image identification number. The vast majority of images in SPIRO are copyrighted."

IMAGES 1 (on-line images of the National Library of Australia's Pictorial Collection) contains over 15,000 historical and contemporary images relating to Australia and its place in the world, including paintings, drawings, rare prints, objects and photographs. The images have been selected from more than 40,000 paintings, drawings and prints and more than 550,000 photographs held in the National Library's Pictorial Collection. Topics covered include first impressions of Australia, convict days, gold mining and Australian towns.

IMAGES 1 offers a number of search options to enhance access to the images including searching by the creator (for example photographer or artist; other names associated with a work or collection; title; subject; the image number in the database; and by format (for example, watercolor or photograph).

Founded in 1989 by Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft, Corbis is a main provider of visual content and services in the digital age, offering more than 20 million photographs and fine-art images (and 1,3 on-line) for access worldwide via the Internet, on CD-ROM disc, and through traditional stock catalogs. The images includes contemporary stock photography, photojournalism, archival photography, and royalty-free images, available to both creative professionals and private consumers.

7.4. Future Trends for Digital Libraries

The quick development of digital libraries leads us to define the role of the digital library, a very recent concept, relating to the much older "traditional" library, and vice versa.

In the same way that the paper document is not going to be "killed" by the electronic document, at least not in the near future, many librarians believe the "traditional" library is not going to be "killed" by the digital library.

When interviewed by Jérôme Strazzulla in Le Figaro of June 3, 1998, Jean-Pierre Angremy, president of the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France) stated: "We cannot, we will not be able to digitize everything. In the long term, a digital library will only be one element of the whole library".

Digital libraries give instant access to many works in the public domain. They also give instant access to old and rare texts and images. The full-screen images are still quite long to download, so many sites were backed up to present small images, so as not to ask too much from the cybernaut's patience. Most of the time a bigger format can be requested by clicking on the selected image. This problem should be solved in the future with improvements in data transmission.

The digital libraries also further the textual research on one or several works at the same time, such as the works of Shakespeare, Dante's Divine Comedy, different versions of The Bible, etc.

The major problem of the cyberlibrary is the fact that recent documents cannot be posted because they don't belong to the public domain. Some projects, like DOI: The Digital Identifier System, an identification system for digital media, will enable automated copyright management systems.

Another problem is format harmonization, to allow the downloading of the texts by any hardware and software. Libraries often choose the ASCII format (ASCII: American standard code for information interchange) or the SGML format (SGML: standard generalized markup language).

Many organizations are involved in research relating to digital libraries.

Sponsored by the The Library of UC Berkeley and Sun Microsystems, SunSITE is the site where the Berkeley Digital Library builds digital collections and services while providing information and support to others doing the same. Its contents are: catalogs and indexes; help/search tools and administrative info; Java corner; teaching and training; text and image collections; information for digital library developers; research and development: where digital libraries are being built; tools: software for building digital libraries.

The Digital Library Technology (DLT) Project supports the development of new technologies to facilitate public access to the data of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) via computer networks, particularly technologies that develop tools, applications, and software and hardware systems that are able to scale upward to accommodate evolving user requirements and order-of-magnitude increases in user access.

The Stanford Universities Digital Libraries Project deals primarily with computing literature, with a strong focus on networked information sources. It is one participant among five universities of the Digital Library Initiative, supported by the NSF (National Science Foundation), DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). "The Initiative's focus is to dramatically advance the means to collect, store, and organize information in digital forms, and make it available for searching, retrieval, and processing via communication networks - all in user-friendly ways."

Library 2000 gives the historical record of a project held by the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) between Fall 1995 and February 1998. Library 2000 was a computer systems research project that explored the implications of large-scale on-line storage using the future electronic library as an example. The project was pragmatic, developing a prototype using the technology and system configurations expected to be economically feasible in the year 2000.

Based at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), the D-Lib Program supports the community of people with research interests in digital libraries and electronic publishing. D-Lib Magazine, the magazine of digital library research, is a monthly compilation of contributed stories, commentary, and briefings.

The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) provides a very interesting section Electronic Collections and Services.

8. ON-LINE CATALOGS

[In this chapter:]

[8.1. Library Catalogs / 8.2. International Bibliographic Databases / 8.3. Future Trends for On-line Catalogs]

Why a whole chapter on catalogs? Because, even if most of them are not yet user-friendly and are still in the domain of information specialists, they are essential to students, researchers, and anybody who needs a particular document or wants to know more about a specific topic.

Until now, the catalogs could easily be reproached as being complicated to deal with, and above all for giving the references of the documents but never giving access to their contents and full-text. All this is now changing. Catalogs on the Web have become more attractive and user-friendly. And, in an emerging trend, catalogs have begun to give instant access to some documents, for example, the works listed in The Universal Library which can be accessed through the Experimental Search System (ESS) of the Library of Congress.

8.1. Library Catalogs

Two catalogs, those of The British Library and the Library of Congress, are impressive bibliographic tools, freely available to all Internet users. They include many documents published in non-English languages.

In May 1997, The British Library launched OPAC 97, which provides free access via the World Wide Web to the catalogs of the major British Library collections in London and Boston Spa. For a wider range of databases and many additional facilities, the British Library offers Blaise, an on-line bibliographic information service (which you must pay for), and Inside, article title records from 20,000 journals and 16,000 conferences. As explained on the website:

"The Library's services are based on its outstanding collections, developed over 250 years, of over one hundred and fifty million items representing every age of written civilisation, every written language and every aspect of human thought. At present individual collections have their own separate catalogues, often built up around specific subject areas. Many of the Library's plans for its collections, and for meeting its users' needs, require the development of a single catalogue database. This is being pursued in the Library's Corporate Bibliographic Programme which seeks to address this issue."

The reference collections represented on OPAC 97 comprise:

a) Modern books and periodicals from Britain and overseas;

b) Humanities and Social Sciences collection (from 1975), which include: humanities and social sciences information; popular science and psychology holdings; modern oriental holdings; rich resources relating to Africa; Hispanic materials relating to Spain, Portugal, Portuguese North Africa and Latin America; one of Europe's largest collection relating to Slavonic, East European and Soviet studies;

c) Science, Technology and Business collection (from 1975);

d) Music collection (1980- ), one of the world's finest collections of printed music;

e) Older books and periodicals from Britain and overseas;

f) Older reference material collection (to 1975 only), incomparable holdings of early printing from Britain and overseas Western and Oriental materials from the beginning of writing, including: archives and materials assembled by the former India Office; rich resources relating to Africa; Hispanic materials relating to Spain, Portugal, Portuguese North Africa and Latin America (one of Europe's largest collections relating to Slavonic, East European and Soviet studies); historical resources for scientific, technological and business information; and musical works.

The Document Supply collections represented on OPAC 97 are comprised of:

a) Books and reports collection (from 1980), which covers millions of British and overseas books, reports and UK theses;

b) Journals/Serials collection (from 1700), including half a million British and overseas periodicals (journals and serials);

c) Conference collection (from 1800), which is the world's largest collection of conference proceedings.

Parts of the current systems are now 20 years old. The basic design of the systems is no longer in line with current business needs and the fact that the British Library's software is out of date is often a hindrance, particularly as concerns cooperation with other organizations. The British Library has therefore decided to replace these systems, and the Corporate Bibliographic Programme is charged with implementing this decision.

The key objectives of the Programme, as summarized on their website, are:

"- To ensure the continuation of essential processes and services, i.e. creating, maintaining and providing access to catalogue data;

- to make these processes and services more efficient and effective; and

- to provide a basis for future developments which will support the Library's strategic objectives and be in line with the Library's information systems strategy."

The Library of Congress Catalogs can be searched using four different methods: a) Word Search; b) Browse Search; c) Command Search; and d) Experimental Search System (ESS).

a) The Word Search's Z39.50 Gateway provides a simple search form for authors and title queries and an advanced search form allowing the use of Boolean operators (and, or, and not), with searches for subjects, names, titles, series, notes, and various numbers. Some of these records have direct links to digitized materials.

b) The Browse Search allows the user to browse and then select from alphabetical indexes for the Library's catalogs, including subject cross references. One can browse by subject, author (personal, corporate), conference, title, series, Library of Congress Classification (partial call number), Dewey Decimal Number, and standard numbers like the ISBN (international standard book number), the ISSN (international standard serial number), and the LCCN (Library of Congress control number).

c) The Command Search allows the use of commands which can be typed to search for words and to browse indexes for the Library's catalogs, and for additional non-catalog files. This method provides access to LOCIS (the Library of Congress Information System, which is the original mainframe-based retrieval system), with browsable indexes, word searches, Boolean combinations, various display options, set creation, and advanced features for limiting and refining search results. This method requires the Internet Telnet function (either Telnet or tn3270) in order to connect to LOCIS. The Telnet capability comes with most WWW browsers, but must be configured.

d) The Experimental Search System (ESS), currently located in the LC Web research and development area, supports relevancy-ranked searching of catalog records, as well as sorting and e-mailing search results. Special search features include analyzing results by subject heading and "browsing" the shelf for items with similar LC call numbers. Some of these records have direct links to digitized materials, including selected full-text, image, video and audio files, at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. This is a test system and results may not be all inclusive.

The catalog records relate to books (9,543,910 as of December 10, 1998), maps (171,756), serials (825,664), prints and photographs (68,135), manuscripts (10,698), music (209,142), visual materials (278,771) and software (6,318). As explained on the website:

"The Experimental Search System (ESS) is one of the Library of Congress' first efforts to make selected cataloging and digital library resources available over the World Wide Web by means of a single, point-and-click interface. The interface consists of several search query pages (Basic, Advanced, Number, and a Browse screen) and several search results pages (an item list of brief displays and an item full display), together with brief help files which link directly from significant words on those pages. By exploiting the powerful synergies of hyperlinking and a relevancy-ranked search engine (InQuery from Sovereign Hill Software), we hope the ESS will provide a new and more intuitive way of searching the traditional OPAC (on-line public access catalog). [...]

Besides the cataloging records for over 4 million books (including JACKPHY records not currently available through SCORPIO); 263,000 motion pictures, videos, filmstrips and other visual work; 200,000 sound recordings and musical scores; more than 150,000 maps; and 4,300 computer files - i.e., LC cataloging records created since 1968 - ESS also contains the cataloging for almost 140,000 photographs and manuscripts in the National Digital Library Program's American Memory, linking to more than 70,000 digital photographs and images available on-line. By indexing the works selected and organized by The On-Line Books Page at Carnegie Mellon University, links are also provided to the full-text of over 2,500 on-line books from sites across the Internet. Even early motion pictures are available for searching and viewing once the proper viewer is installed. (Hint: try searching on the subject heading 'shorts' in the Photographs, Manuscripts, Movies collection.)"

Except for their prohibitive costs, the commercial databases give us an idea of what the catalogs could be in the future: for the past several years the Dialog Corporation, Lexis-Nexis or UnCover have been using their catalogs to provide on-line documents.

Based in London, United Kingdom, with regional headquarters in Mountain View, California, and Hong Kong, the Dialog Corporation is a major on-line information company, with 900 main databases (the most well-known being Dialog and Profound) serving over 20,000 corporate clients in 120 countries. Content areas include: news and media; medicine; pharmaceuticals; chemicals; reference; social sciences; business and finance; food and agriculture; intellectual property; government and regulations; science and technology; and energy and environment.

LEXIS-NEXIS is an international provider of enhanced information services and management tools using on-line, Internet, CD-ROM and hardcopy formats for a variety of professionals. It serves customers in more than 60 countries. The 25-year old company has introduced Web products for business, legal and academic research, current awareness, and both standard and customizable tracking of competitive and business subjects and companies on a daily basis.

A service of CARL Corporation, UnCover is both a fax reprint service and the world's largest database of magazine and journal articles, with current article information taken from well over 17,000 multidisciplinary journals. UnCover contains brief descriptive information for over 7,000,000 articles which have appeared since Fall 1988. Any Internet surfer can use the free keyword access to article titles and summaries.

8.2. International Bibliographic Databases

Two organizations, the OCLC Online Computer Library Center and the Research Library Information Network (RLIN), run international databases of bibliographic information through the Internet.

The OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, library computer service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. More than 27,000 libraries in 65 countries use OCLC services to manage their collections and to provide on-line reference services. The site is available in English, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

OCLC Services include: access services; collections and technical services; reference services; resource sharing; Dewey Decimal Classification (published in OCLC Forest Press); and preservation resources. From its headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, OCLC operates one of the world's largest library information networks. Libraries in the United States join OCLC through their OCLC-affiliated Regional Networks. Libraries outside the United States receive OCLC services through OCLC Asia Pacific, OCLC Canada, OCLC Europe, OCLC Latin America and the Caribbean, or via international distributors.

OCLC also runs WorldCat, name of the OCLC Online Union Catalog, which is a merged electronic catalog of libraries around the world, and probably the world's largest bibliographic database with its 38 million records (at the beginning of 1998) in 400 languages (with transliteration for non-Roman languages), and an annual increase of 2 million bibliographic records.

WorldCat is derived from a concept which is the same for all union catalogs: earn time to avoid the cataloguing of the same document by many catalogers worldwide. When they are about to catalog a publication, the catalogers of the member libraries search the OCLC catalog. If they find the corresponding record, they copy it in their own catalog and add some local information. If they don't find the record, they create it in the OCLC catalog, and this new record will immediately be available to all the catalogers of the member libraries worldwide.

Unlike RLIN, another international bibliographic database (see below) which accepts several records for the same document, the OCLC Online Union Catalog takes into consideration only one record per document, and emphatically requests its members not to create double records for documents which have already been cataloged. The records are created in USMARC format (MARC: machine readable catalog) according to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd version (AACR2).

What is the history of OCLC? According to the website:

"In 1967, the presidents of the colleges and universities in the state of Ohio founded the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) to develop a computerized system in which the libraries of Ohio academic institutions could share resources and reduce costs.

OCLC's first offices were in the Main Library on the campus of the Ohio State University (OSU), and its first computer room was housed in the OSU Research Center. It was from these academic roots that Frederick G. Kilgour, OCLC's first president, oversaw the growth of OCLC from a regional computer system for 54 Ohio colleges into an international network. In 1977, the Ohio members of OCLC adopted changes in the governance structure that enabled libraries outside Ohio to become members and participate in the election of the Board of Trustees; the Ohio College Library Center became OCLC, Inc. In 1981, the legal name of the corporation became OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Today, OCLC serves more than 27,000 libraries of all types in the U.S. and 64 other countries and territories."

Both complementary and different from the OCLC Online Catalog (WordCat) with its 38 million records (with one record per document), the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) includes 88 million records (with several records per document).

RLIN is run by by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). The central RLIN database is a union catalog of nearly 88 million items held in comprehensive research libraries and special libraries in RLG member institutions, plus over 100 additional law, technical, and corporate libraries using RLIN. It includes:

a) Records that describe works cataloged by the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the U.S. Government Printing Office, CONSER (Conversion of Serials Project), The British Library, the British National Bibliography, the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, and RLG's members and users;

b) Comprehensive representation of books cataloged since 1968 and rapidly expanding coverage for older materials;

c) Information about non-book materials ranging from musical scores, films, videos, serials, maps, and recordings, to archival collections and machine-readable data files;

d) Unique on-line access to special resources, such as the United Nations' DOCFILE and CATFILE records, and the Rigler and Deutsch Index to pre-1950 commercial sound recordings; and

e) International book vendors' in-process records that can be transferred by bibliographers, acquisitions libraries, and catalogers to create citations, order records, and cataloging in their local systems.

In RLIN, particularly valuable sources of processing information are available on-line:

a) A catalog of computer files: Machine-readable data files are of value to a growing number of disciplines. RLIN contains records describing a wide array of such files, from the full-text French literary works in the ARTFL Database to the statistical data collected by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan;